


Best of Horses

by little_spider



Series: The Liar's Mouth [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, I mean doesn't he always?, Loki Needs a Hug, One-Sided Relationship, Pre-Canon, Pre-Thor (2011), Teen Angst, Thor Is a Good Bro, agent of asgard reference if you squint, sleipnir - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 09:16:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4661109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_spider/pseuds/little_spider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young Loki attempts a spell far beyond his ability and suffers dire consequences. Sif pines while observing the fallout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best of Horses

**Author's Note:**

> nota bene: if Sif here comes across as a moony, emotionally dramatic 14 year old, that's because she's developmentally (in Asgardian years, whatever they might be) about 14 years old, long, long before she becomes the perfect badass bitch we all know and love in the movies and comics.

Sif couldn't quite put her finger on the moment she started to suspect that the Loki Odinsson who walked the halls of the palace, sparred in the training yard with all of them, sat long hours into the night in his cubicle in the library, who sat in classrooms at the Collegium with her and his brother and fidgeted endlessly during lectures, who ate truly enormous amounts every morning at breakfast with the rest of the warriors in training -- was not, in fact, the real Loki Odinsson. Something had seemed off about him for quite a while, but the thought first consciously occurred to her during breakfast when she noticed that he wasn't devouring his mountain of bacon with quite the same gusto as usual, and that, on second glance, he had gone for the sausages instead.

He never ate sausages at breakfast. Instead, he was a ravenous consumer of bacon, preferably crispy to the point of being burned. Sif had watched him often enough at breakfast, trying to hide her gaze behind the curtain of her hair. He would easily eat a whole plate of bacon while talking in a steady stream of rapid words about anything and everything. (Somehow he managed to do both at the same time while maintaining impeccable table manners, which could not always be said for both of the sons of Odin and Frigga.) But now he was quietly eating sausages, face strangely expressionless. Sif had spent a lot of time looking at his face, and thought it was probably the first time she had seen him with this blank look.

Something else occurred to her then, which was how straight and proper he was sitting, and come to think of it he had been like that lately, sitting, standing, riding without his usual hunched shoulders. Loki had been painfully self-conscious for as long as she had known who he was. The young man sitting across and down the table from her radiated entirely different body language. That was when she began to suspect that this person was not actually Loki.

Sif only became certain when, several weeks later, she kissed him in the library. She tried to ignore the pounding of her heart as she walked up and sat on the library table where he was studying. She reached out a hand to touch his cheek, bent down, and clumsily kissed him on the mouth. Sif had never kissed a boy before this. She had imagined this moment for so very long, had longed for it ever since the time that Loki had turned to her while they were sitting next to each other at a bonfire at harvest time and he had tried to complement her dress but his voice cracked dramatically into a boyish falsetto. Several young men guffawed at that, and one of them had exclaimed "will you listen to that silver tongue of his, boys!?" He had looked so embarassed and flushed so red, and his eyes went so sad that Sif started hurting for him. She tried to say "thank you" for his complement and smile at him. She decided that she would like to kiss him someday and took to frequenting those places where he was known to spend time, on the chance that she might encounter him.

"You're not Loki Odinsson," she said, drawing back from him. For one, this person did not look surprised or disgusted, just blank. For two, his face retained its usual pale complexion. Loki blushed often and easily, whether he was embarassed, eager, frustrated. Sif did not see any reaction on his face whatsoever.

"What?" the false Loki in front of her said. Then he looked back at the book on the desk and ignored her. Two weeks later he seemed to fade and flicker at breakfast, and vanished abruptly after going alarmingly transparent. Frigga, Sif heard, departed soon after that to find him -- the real him.

Now, Sif stood outside of his chamber door with a book she thought he might like. The Queen had found him unconscious and half-dead from heat exposure in the Iron Wood, she heard their friends say, and he was suffering from an acute magical exhaustion after trying some kind of experimental spell far beyond his skill level. Loki had been working with a notorious exiled enchantress, it was said, who had fled when the magic failed, leaving him to die alone. Sif knew that it must have been a near-impossible spell, if it was beyond Loki's abilities. He was the cleverest and most accomplished person she had ever known. He was laid up in bed to recover, so she had brought him a book of poetry that she had found on her mother's old reading shelf. Perhaps it would help with the boredom of his recovery. Perhaps he would come across the second to last poem in the book, the one where the faithful maid declared to her beloved that she loved but him alone, and that she would run with him to the woods since he had been declared an outlaw, because she could not bear any kind of existence without him.

Perhaps during his convalescence he would stumble across that poem and, somehow, come to learn what she felt for him.

She raised her fist, hesitated for a moment, and finally knocked softly on the door. A quiet voice bid her enter. His chamber was in shadow, the drapes drawn and lights dimmed. Sif shut the door as quietly as she could and made to kneel on the thick carpet.

"No, no, dear girl, none of that." The queen was sitting on the bed, back against the headboard and legs stretched out in front of her, voice low and worn. "Come sit."

"I-I . . . I just came to see how, how he . . . " She trailed off and stared at the floor.

"Well, come see for yourself. He is right here." Sif padded quietly over. He lay on the bed next to Frigga, his dark head resting on her lap, bundled up under the covers. The queen stroked his hair as he slept. Sif could only see a little of his face from where she stood, but he looked shockingly pale. She looked up in surprise. The Allmother's face was red and puffy from crying.

"I almost lost him," Frigga said. "My little pigeon. I called him that because he used to toddle after us everywhere as soon as he learned to walk. Only he was never a nuisance to me. Never."

Sif clutched the book to her chest. She thought what her world could have turned into, where she could not sit at breakfast and listen to him talk while he ate bacon, where she could not find excuses to go to the library hoping to catch a glimpse of him hunched over in his cubicle, where she could not turn bright red and start stammering if he so much as acknowledged her presence.

"It must have been a hard spell, if he could not do it," she said. "He is the smartest and bravest person I know." Had her voice quavered? Had she said too much?

The queen smiled at her. "Yes, it was hard. But you're wrong, because he succeeded at it."

"What?" Sif swallowed, not wanting to be nosy. "What was it?"

"Nothing less than creating a living thing."

"Like a magical construct?" Their teacher had mentioned this once. She remembered vividly that Loki had become transfixed and written furiously in his notebook. Because she had been so busy watching him, she had forgotten to take notes. She only learned the principles of it because he had kept talking about it at breakfast, and because she never seemed to forget what he said.

"Even more than that," the queen said. Loki sighed in his sleep, and she tucked the blanket closer around him. "A construct is like an automaton. This is a full, living, breathing being, with its own will and its own instincts. A marvelous and strange creature."

Sif would not cry. She would not. "You must be very proud of him."

Frigga only responded with a quiet "Hm." She looked down and brushed his hair back from where it had fallen over his face.

Sif shifted on her feet, uncomfortable. "I will kill her," she blurted suddenly. "I will go after that wicked sorceress. I will kill her for leaving him to die." It was no matter that she was still so scrawny and weak that she couldn't yet knock any of the boys off their feet in the ring.

"Oh, sweetheart. There is no need for that. Do not throw your life away." Hot anger flooded Sif at the queen's words. She couldn't possibly know, no one could possibly know how she would willingly die for him. A thousand times over she would die for him.

"Sif," the queen said. "He needs us. He needs people who love him so fiercely. Especially right now."

Sif started to cry. The queen barely knew her. Loki himself, she was sure, barely even knew who she was.

"And speaking of needs, I need you, my dear. Right now, in fact," Frigga said. Sif looked up, confused. "I need to go to the loo. I need to eat something. I need to rest, just for an hour or two. Will you sit with him?"

Sif gaped, stunned. "Of course. I will do anything for -- for you." Frigga gently, gently shifted him and rose from the bed. When Sif sat down in her place, feeling awkward, scrawny and ungainly, the Allmother shifted him again so that his head rested in her lap, and stood still while Sif hesitantly tucked the blanket around him again.

When the queen retreated to the bathroom, she hunched down over him. She tried to distract herself from the pain in her heart by looking at the way his eyelashes rested against the curve of his pale cheek. When the queen asked her if she would like anything to eat or drink, Sif shook her head, despite the gnawing of hunger in her belly. Her one hand rested on his shoulder, the other cradled protectively around his head, and she would not let go of him, not for the world, not unless he asked her to.

At one point while the Allmother slept on the couch nearby, Loki shifted restlessly and clutched at her leg, murmuring. " _Mama?_ " Sif thought there was something plaintive in his voice. She stroked his hair very gently. She thought that maybe if she whispered very quietly, he would think she was his mother. So she gave near silent voice to the deep secret of her heart for the first time since she had felt it blossom there, years ago.

*****

Later, Sif went down to the paddock to see this stupid, evil thing that had almost killed him, the result of his spell. She rested her forearms on the top of the fence, a little away from where Thor and his friends stood, but not too far that she could not hear them.

"Well, that's a bit, ah, different."

"I blame Amora, that witch. Anything she has a hand in turns out to be a freak."

"Shut up. My father has taken it for himself. He thinks it is wondrous indeed, and so do I. My brother made it."

There was a bit of an awkward silence before the one fellow, Volstagg, spoke again. "I suppose it is impressive, Thor. I've never seen a magical . . . a magical -- what was that thing called again?"

"Magical construct," Sif blurted, angry. "And it is _not_. It is a real creature, not a construct. It has its own will and instincts, not just extensions of its maker's. And the spell almost killed Loki in the casting of it. If any of you make fun of it or of him I will beat you bloody." The ferocity in her own voice scared even her. "Plus, I think it is more than marvelous."

Sif turned away and looked at it. It was hateful, a freak indeed, she told herself, even as the new colt practically glided in effortless grace, playful, galloping in a wondrous eight-beat canter that took her breath away, black coat glistening in the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my attempt to make some sense of what always strikes me as one of the more grotesque stories associated with Loki in the Old Norse Eddas, one of the only ones that the comics (to my knowledge) never really deal with.
> 
> If there's interest in a continuation of this story, I've got more written. I was thinking it might work as a series. Any thoughts?


End file.
